Built in a more opulent time for a more populous Brooklyn, the Loew’s Kings at 1025 Flatbush Avenue has spent more than three decades in New York City’s hands. The struggling old movie palace, which once accommodated 3,600 theatergoers, closed not long after the 1977 blackout. The property was seized for nonpayment of taxes.

Would-be rescuers, Magic Johnson among them, came and went. The Kings never fully lost its haunted Hollywood grandeur, but its glory was draining away.

Today, however, seemingly in concert with the revitalization of Brooklyn, the Kings has begun to dazzle again. Plasterers and painters are back in charge. There is visible reason to believe the ACE Theatrical Group of Houston when it says the theater will reopen in 2015.

ACE, Goldman Sachs and the National Development Council hold a 55-year lease on the property from the city’s Economic Development Corporation. They plan to spend $94 million — $51.5 million of it from public sources — to restore and enlarge the theater into a performing arts showcase. The architects are Martinez & Johnson.

The project includes the official closing (or de-mapping) of East 22nd Street, between Tilden Avenue and Duryea Place, to accommodate an enlarged stage house. “Expansion behind the current stage into the closed East 22nd Street will allow for dressing rooms, space to store theater sets and other critical back-of-house operations,” Kyle Kimball, the president of the Economic Development Corporation, said in a statement.

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Details from the ceiling of the lobby of the Loew's Kings Theater.CreditBryan Thomas for The New York Times

Toland Grinnell, the project manager for EverGreene, recalled the slurping sound his boots made in a greenish growth three inches thick on the balcony carpet and the sight of huge white mold rings on the two-story-high wooden pilasters in the grand foyer.

His wife, SunHee, set a clothes hamper beside the front door of their home in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. When Mr. Grinnell returned from the Kings, she instructed him to disrobe before he entered the house. “It was that toxic,” he said.

Workers did not begin by taking brushes and trowels to the walls. They first had to clean what could be cleaned and remove what could not be salvaged. Taking great care, they reviewed the composition of the antimold detergents they planned to use with chemists at Benjamin Moore & Company, to ensure there would be no adverse reactions with the primer coat.

They examined about 200 paint chips from the auditorium to determine what colors were original and how they were achieved. What looked like gold leaf turned out to be aluminum leaf that had been toned gold. Around 60 years ago, in what seems to have been an act of existential despair, coffee-ground brown paint was applied almost everywhere.

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A close-up of the intricate designs in the ceiling at the long-abandoned Brooklyn theater.CreditBryan Thomas for The New York Times

At a cost of $2 million, a forest of scaffolding was erected in the main auditorium. But the ceiling is so cavernous and high that scaffolding had to be built atop the scaffolding: smaller rigs permitting workers to reach every surface. And what surfaces. “There was no economy with ornament,” Mr. Grinnell said. “It was go-for-broke.”

Some flourishes, like faces and fleurs-de-lis, can be reproduced by layering coats of silicone on them to create a flexible mold. Once it solidifies, the silicone is peeled off the original and used to cast multiple plaster likenesses. In some cases, plasterers must recreate ornaments from scratch, laboring in makeshift studios tucked into the scaffolding, 65 feet above the orchestra floor.

A visitor is hard pressed to tell where contracting leaves off and artistry begins. “All the guys are deeply connected to the materials,” Mr. Grinnell said.

He explained his own proprietary connection to the project, as a third-generation Brooklynite. “My grandmother probably came to shows here,” he said — although she probably was not wearing a hard hat, goggles and fluorescent safety vest at the time.

About half of his crew of 25 workers live in Brooklyn, Mr. Grinnell said. The plaster foreman, Luis Torres, learned his craft at the firm of Saldarini & Pucci in Brooklyn. The bronze subcontractor is the Excalibur Bronze Sculpture Foundry of Brooklyn. The veneer and wood ornament subcontractors are Ted Badea Inc. and American Wood Column, also of Brooklyn.

And yes, Mr. DeMille, the Kings is finally getting ready for its close-up.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A30 of the New York edition with the headline: Old Movie Palace in Brooklyn Gets a Second Chance, and a Renewed Glow. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe